behavior of ind, = and equal, also fiddling with limit



On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Richard Fateman
<fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>wrote:

> is (ind=ind)   returns true
> is (equal(ind,ind)) returns false.
>

I believe this is correct, though confusing.  "=" is syntactic equality;
"equal" is semantic.  Two ind's, like two NaN's, are syntactically/formally
identical, though they do not necessarily represent the same
number/interval.  Actually, a more precise answer for equal(ind,ind) is
"unknown".


> limit(1/x,x,0)   returns  infinity  but the document says it returns und.
>

Both seem correct to me.


> limit(sin(x),x,infinity) returns und
>

I believe this is correct.  For non-real x, abs(sin(x)) -> inf for x->inf
and for real x, it is IND (limit set [-1,1]).  So und is the only possible
answer.


> limit(sin(x),x,inf)      returns ind
>

Inf represents positive real inf, so this is correct.

(ps. Mathematica says limit(sin(x),x,inf) is [-1,1], which was discussed
> earlier.]
>

Seems like a reasonable version of ind giving more info (the limit set).

            -s